Intelligent document processing (IDP) extracts structured information from business documents — invoices, receipts, forms, contracts, claims.
The Pipeline
- Ingest documents: PDFs, scans, photos, emails.
- Classify the document type.
- Extract text and layout with OCR where needed.
- Extract fields — supplier, dates, totals, line items, clauses.
- Validate against business rules and reference data.
- Route exceptions to people for review.
- Export to downstream systems.
Extraction Approaches
- Templates and rules: reliable for a few fixed layouts, brittle otherwise.
- Layout-aware models: trained to understand where text sits on a page.
- Multimodal LLMs: extract fields from varied layouts using instructions and a schema, with little training data.
Validation Is Essential
Check that dates are valid, line items sum to the total, tax is calculated correctly, and supplier details match your records. Validation catches most extraction errors.
Human in the Loop
Route low-confidence or rule-failing documents to reviewers, and use their corrections to measure and improve accuracy. Aim for high automation on routine documents while keeping people on exceptions.
Measuring Performance
Track field-level accuracy, the share of documents processed without human touch, processing time and error rates found downstream.
Security and Privacy
Documents often contain personal and financial data. Apply access controls, retention limits and appropriate data handling for any external services.